India Mulls Talks

Hijackers Threaten

Hostages To Be Killed Soon, Captors Warn

NEW DELHI — India's government said Sunday that it had not closed the door on negotiations with the hijackers holding 160 passengers of an Indian airliner in southern Afghanistan.

The drama has become a race against time after Afghanistan's Taliban government warned Sunday night that the refueled plane would have to leave its territory unless talks over a solution are initiated.

The hijackers threatened to start killing their hostages by about 2 a.m. CST on Monday if India fails to free a Pakistani Muslim cleric, according to a late news report from Reuters.

A Taliban aviation official, Mohammed Khiber, who went aboard the plane Sunday in Kandahar, described the conditions inside the aircraft as poor. The plane was hijacked two days ago.

"Inside the air is very bad, and it smells like people have been sick," he said.

The hijackers have killed one passenger, Rippan Katyal, 25, an Indian who was coming home from his honeymoon. His wife, Rachna, was not among the 27 hostages released in return for fuel when the plane landed in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday morning.

At least three other passengers have been stabbed for apparently failing to obey the hijackers' orders. Released passengers, mainly women and children, said the male passengers were blindfolded after the five guerrillas, armed with knives, grenades and pistols, seized the aircraft Friday on a flight from Katmandu, Nepal, to New Delhi.

In an apparent effort to avoid a tragedy or stall for time, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said Sunday, "I will exercise all options toward the aim of ensuring the well-being of the passengers."

About a dozen relatives of the hostages stormed into a news conference by Singh shouting anti-government slogans and demanding the rescue of their loved ones. Some wept.

Indian security officials have ruled out a raid on the airliner, which at one point was surrounded at Kandahar by 200 Taliban soldiers. The troops were removed later Sunday, but Taliban vehicles remained nearby.

The plane is on the tarmac in a city that is the Taliban's stronghold. India, which considers the Taliban government a satellite state of its archenemy Pakistan, has no diplomatic relations with Kabul.

Singh's statement came 24 hours after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told the nation India would not bow to terrorism, apparently ruling out any prospect that his government would free Maulana Masood Azhar, 31, the religious leader and ideologue of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, a Kashmiri separatist guerrilla organization. The hijackers have demanded his release, together with a number of Kashmiri guerrillas also held in Indian jails.

Azhar, who describes himself as a journalist and religious scholar, has been held at a high security jail in Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, since 1994. Indian media have reported that the hijackers are led by Azhar's brother Ibrahim, but the family denies this.

Considered the fiercest of the Kashmiri separatist groups, the Harkat-ul-Ansar was initially trained and educated in Pakistan, and many of its members fought with Muslim forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The group once said it had 5,000 fighters. It has been denounced for acts of terrorism in Egypt and Tunisia.

Muslim secessionists like the Harkat-ul-Ansar, backed by Pakistan and lately the Taliban, have been fighting Indian forces in Kashmir for a separate Muslim state. The Kashmir conflict has already led to two Indo-Pakistani wars and this summer turned into a vicious confrontation when guerrillas and Pakistan forces occupied the Kargil and Das Heights on the Indian side of a line that separates Indian-held and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Although trained in Pakistan the separatists' spiritual mentors have always been Afghanistan's Taliban.

Security sources in New Delhi said it was no coincidence the hijacked plane's voyage ended in Taliban territory, where internationally wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden has also found refuge.

The fundamentalist Taliban holds the key to the hijack drama. The regime has been attempting to gain international recognition. It has publicly condemned the hijacking but left its solution to the United Nations and India.

On Sunday, Russia urged that a special session of the UN Security Council be held to discuss the hijacking. The earliest such a meeting could be scheduled is Monday.

"It is necessary for the Security Council members to discuss the dangerous situation in the region," Russia's first deputy ambassador to the UN, Gennady Gatilov, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Late Saturday a three-member UN team in Kandahar obtained the release of one of the ailing passengers. Because India and the Taliban have no diplomatic relations the UN has been asked to act as mediator.